Lu

Lu was the ritual heart of ancient China, the small state whose courts preserved the Zhou order after the order itself had decayed. Enfeoffed to Boqin, son of the Duke of Zhou, with its capital at Qufu south of Mount Tai, Lu kept the music, ceremonies and archives of three dynasties when other states had abandoned them; men said that when Zhou ritual survives, it survives in Lu. The state was never militarily great, overshadowed by Qi on its shoulder, and real power slipped early to the Three Huan ministerial houses descended from Duke Huan's sons. But what Lu lost in power it repaid in culture: Confucius was born in its town of Zou, taught beneath its walls, and compiled its court chronicle, the Spring and Autumn Annals, into one of the Five Classics. His disciples, Mencius after them, made Lu's school the conscience of the age, judging dukes and kings by rites older than their thrones. The irony endured to the end: the state that taught China ceremony could not defend itself by ceremony, and in 249 BC, long after its neighbours had fallen to Qin and Chu, the men of Chu took Qufu and Lu's eight centuries of rites passed into the empire's keeping.